Ethics and Decision Making in Local Schools: Inclusion, Policy, and Reform

"The current school reform movement presents several unique opportunities to come to grips with equity and excellence issues in our society. If these opportunities are addressed with thoughtfulness and high moral standards, there is the possibility that the many conflicting, legitimate demands inherent in a pluralistic democracy can be addressed with justice and compassion. "Ethics and decision making in local schools" offers a unique perspective on how local schools can engage in democratic dialogue within an ethical framework to respond to these demands."--Eugene Edgar "This is a challenging and provocative treatise in applied ethics. It challenges law and policy on inclusion, initiatives in school reform, and research data, finding each to be wanting as a sole basis for decision making. It provokes the reader to consider how best to decide what is best for all children, and it answer this question by relying on an ancient yet paradoxically contemporary response : Welcome the stranger, welcome the presence of disability. That advice affirms the value of inclusion but does so on different grounds than previously adduced, the grounds of ethics. This book is for the thoughtful reader ; patently, it is aimed at and will benefit those who believe in, yet still search for, the ethics of inclusion. Overall, it is an ambitious and satisfying into relatively unexplored territory." -- Rud and Ann Turnbull.